Enterprises and cloud service providers continue to experience dramatic growth in the amount of data stored in private and public clouds. As a result, data storage costs are rising rapidly because a single high-performance storage tier is often used for all cloud data. However, much of the ever-increasing volume of information is “cold data,” that is, data that is infrequently accessed. There's considerable potential to reduce cloud costs by moving this data to a lower-cost cold storage tier. As a result, cold storage is emerging as a significant trend.
Cold storage usage models include backup, disaster recovery, archiving, and social media applications. The following four interrelated parameters are relevant to most cold storage usage models:
1) Expected storage life: cold storage is designed for persistent rather than transient data and is used as long-term storage for data that is considered important enough to retain.
2) Access frequency: as data ages, it tends to be less frequently accessed and therefore becomes more suited to cold storage. Data may be moved to cold storage based on the date and time it was last accessed.
3) Access speed: cold storage explicitly assumes that lower performance is acceptable for older data.
4) Cost: The benefit of cold storage is the reduced cost of storing older and less frequently accessed data.
As in other types of storage, cold storage is susceptible to memory failure, however, given the large size of cold storage, maintaining a full backup of the cold data may be prohibitively expensive and the process of repairing a cold storage drive may require sophisticated equipment that is generally not available at the site of the storage device. As such the Ultra-High Capacity Solid-State Drive (UHC SSD) is an appealing solution for many data centers and some users of traditional Hard-Disk Drive solution. As compared to alternative solutions, the UHC SSD may have lower maintenance cost, less power consumption, and consume less area.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known to a person of ordinary skill in the art.